Dear friends and neighbors,
my last little project was the build of a longstroke paddleengine with use of cylinders, pistons and further parts from the Hornby Rocket.
I bought the Rocket for a low price and took her to pieces. The tiny boiler was deformed - speziel the flame tube - and complete unusable.
But this doesn`t matter, I only needed the steamengine. It wasn`t difficult, building a new frame with aluminium L - profiles, the cylinders were fixed with M 2 scews with the correct distance.
Unexspectly presentation of running with steam was very good, the engine is running rather dry compared with the chinese oscillating plant. Also the torque is far better - no wonder with a stroke of 27 mm. I didn`t open the soldered Cylinders, bore may be about 10 mm. Engine runs with minimal 0,2 bar pressure!
The plant will get a reverse valve (originally slip excenter). I want to install her in my "Courier" paddler to replace the weak and very wet running chinese oscillator.
I only found one word mentioning disadvantage of the Rocket engine: The four fork heads (don`t know the English expression) which connect pistons and piston valves are obviously made of plastic. This should be removed also by metal parts.
Thomas